Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

"Hmm… And once she's trained, could you kill her in a fight?"

"Oh, yes, Majesty, though not easily. But I can kill anyone."

"Well, Master Butter, I've known two men you couldn't have killed."

"… Ah, the King, of course. Very strong. Was very strong."

"My Newton, yes. And another… I don't think you'd find me easy, either, though I'm not what I was."

"I would cut my throat before that contest, My Dearest Majesty."

The Queen set the gherkin jar down on its shelf with a clack that almost broke it. "Then you're an ass, and impertinent in your affection!"

"My apologies, Queen. But of course, I'm mad."

"Yes, so Paul-doctor says. He says you hear unpleasant voices, but so far manage to disagree with them. And you are useful as master of arms."

Master Butter bowed.

"Now, get out of my sight. Hone my guardian-girl to a fine edge, but do not come private into my presence again for a year."

"A year, Majesty," Master Butter said, " – a year is not so long a time." And bowed himself out of the Chamber of Pickles.

Webster was furious from long imprisonment. Patience had kept him basketed by day, allowed only the shortest night flights for exercise. He bit her thumb to the bone when she reached in with a piece of lunch's mess-kettle mutton, then huddled stoic as she shook his basket – cursing while little drops of her blood flew – then threw it onto the tent's canvas floor and kicked it under the cot.

Sleety early-evening rain came in a gust, as if Lady Weather were angry also.

"Very well," Webster said from under there, speaking in a thin, weedy little croak that someone unfamiliar might not have recognized as speech. "Very… well."

It sounded like a threat, but was surrender.

Patience held her thumb down a moment to bleed it, then insisted that bleeding stop. Even so, it took a while. Webster's teeth, though few and small – a baby's milk teeth in fact – were capable, as he'd proved on a robin once.

When the thumb stopped dripping, Patience wasn't angry anymore, and went to hands and knees. Under the cot, through the basket's woven willow strips, pale blue eyes – the right, wandering – looked out at her. "Very well." Almost a whisper.

"Are you hurt?" She meant his wings.

"No."

"Oh, thank Who Comes," Patience said, reached in, and rolled the basket out while the Mailman scrambled to stay upright. No bitten thumb was worth damaging its wings. More expensive than any two or three occas, this was an embryo halted and kept halted at four months in the womb, while what were becoming arms, wrists, and fingers were encouraged to shape wing-struts instead, and anchorages of muscle were enlarged in the breastbone. All mind-managed, observed through slender glass tubes stuck inside a tribeswoman's belly.

Delicate work, not to be compared to the easier earlier interventions that almost always produced an occa – delicate work, and often unsuccessful. No apartment on the Common cost as much as one of these wonders. And this – she'd named him Webster, since he spoke so well, had forty-three words – this was Township property, not hers.

She set his basket on the cot, and unlatched the lid; Webster tried that constantly, but the method was beyond him, his fingertips too tiny. She took the lid off, and reached in to stroke and lift him out. He was withered, very small – a double handful – and brown as an old leaf, his round bald head the heaviest thing about him. He smelled of milky shit, and had left little slender yellow turds in his folded bedding.

"You bad boy… making messes." And he was a boy, or would have been; there was the tiniest pinch of spoiled cock and balls nested at his bottom.

Webster was still angry, said none of his words while Patience unfolded one of his comfort cloths and wiped him. She reached up to set him against the tent-pole, where he clung with skin wings and little nearly-legs wrapped around the wood, while she took the messed cloths from his basket and folded two fresh ones in.

"Want cheese?" Patience smacked her lips to demonstrate how wonderful the cheese would be.

Webster stared down from the tent-pole – little left blue eye looking straight at her, the other drifting away.

"Cheese?" Patience dug for the crock in her duffel. Table scraps were often fed Mailmen – little meat pieces they could munch and gum to slurry – but farmer's white cheese was recommended, mashed with goat's milk if possible. Both things produced south of the ice, and very expensive.

"Oooh, look at this… look at this!" She held a caked forefinger up to him. "If you bite, I'll make you sorry."

'Make you sorry' was a phrase all Mailmen were taught in training – when occasionally they were made sorry for flapping off the glacier flyway from Cambridge to New Haven and back again. Webster apparently recalled it. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth… and Patience felt eager wetness and heat, the rhythmic tickle of his little tongue as he licked and sucked the clots from her finger.

Five loaded fingertips later, Webster burped and said, "Fly?" – his first courteous word since their fight.

"Yes." Patience lifted him down and set him on her shoulder, which he clutched with fanned translucent amber wings. " – To Map-McAllen."

Webster understood 'McAllen' at least, and nodded. He had – as all completed Mailmen had – a perfect map stuck in his understanding by weeks and weeks of careful feeding of treats for remembering, weeks and weeks of careful scorching with candle flames for forgetting, say, where Map-Charleston, or Map-St. Louis, or Map-Philadelphia, or Map-Amarillo were, and their direction either way and any way. Scorching, as well, for forgetting the how-to-get-theres of much smaller places. All to fashion a messenger so superior to silly pigeons, who could only return where they came from.

"Not sunshine." Webster was a coward, and frightened of hawks.

"No," Patience said. "Moonlight." And turned her head to him for a puppy kiss. He didn't kiss very well… really only licked little licks.

The near-frozen rain peppered the tent's canvas as Patience sat on her cot, and using her small silvered-glass mirror for backing, while Webster watched from her shoulder, wrote a tiny note in tiny printing on a tiny strip of best-milled white paper.

fm better-weather, dear cousin louis, voss and 4000 cav going probably north to be bad in probably texas. now send webster back, yrs, p.

She reread it as Webster crawled down to the blanket beside her and thrust out a fragile little leg. It barely had a knee, had toes too small to count.

It seems probable, Patience thought. She'd heard the word 'north' spoken by a trooper in horse-lines. And a farrier cursing over the lack of replacement shoes for Voss until Boquillas del Carmen. So… probable.

She gently wrapped the strip of paper around Webster's leg – there were tiny soft bones in it – then looked in the covers for the piece of string she'd had ready to fasten the message on. She found the string on her pillow… and found also that she'd changed her mind.

"Why," she said to the Mailman, "should we make my so-old Cousin Louis look wise in Map-McAllen? Why let him interfere with my camp's campaigning? Though it would serve a certain rude ruler right, who threatened to pull me off my horse and hit me with a whip… Still, what could be more foolish than helping foolish Louis rise to Faculty, when he'll deny us credit?"

Webster watched her from the blanket.

" 'Oh,' he'll say, 'I knew it before, that cavalry coming up.' His so-old wife will agree. And you know, Webster, if Monroe's people lose severely in Texas, there will soon be no North Map-Mexico. And with no North Map-Mexico, no need for an ambassadress to it."